Least useful skills?

[MistrBill]

I'm not an expert, still not through my first playthrough. But after a few dozen hours, I'm wondering what people think of the skill system. Personally, in theory, I can see uses for both unarmed and stealth. But in actual practice, they're a waste of time, Archery seems a little overpowered, and shields don't seem worth the trouble- although that last could be because I just stink at using them.

[Tangoblue]

when you get to the Plains you should have the Run, Bow and whatever your melee weapon is high up there. Mid 80's to low 90's. Especially the Bow. I have noticed a big difference when shooting at the mobs. And shields are almost a must for me (I don't dodge very good )

For me, the swim skill is the least useful.

[❌ Peath]

Unarmed is when your weapons break - beside that it's not useful.
Stealth is amazing for sneak attacks that can one-shot a troll in black forrest phase.
Archery seems overpowered until you meet monsters resistant to physical and piercing, Meanwhile shields are useful for reducing damage taken / block completly with heavy shields. Esspecially vs guys like Bonemass or Abomination.

For me the least useful are swords, and except iron mace for bonemass maces (Especially Club after H&H update).
Same for spears and heavy weapons, most of the time.

Most useful are knives, and bow followed by axes.

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by TangoBlue:

when you get to the Plains you should have the Run, Bow and whatever your melee weapon is high up there. Mid 80's to low 90's. Especially the Bow. I have noticed a big difference when shooting at the mobs. And shields are almost a must for me (I don't dodge very good )

For me, the swim skill is the least useful.

80's to 90's? I try not to die too much, but having a skill in the 30's or 40's is pretty good, for me! I haven't messed with training skills specifically, and I hear that's been nerfed recently anyway. You're right, stealth makes the opening 'kiss hello' a lot easier, but outside of that, I'm kind of disappointed at how limited it is.

Swim's the same as stealth and unarmed, not much done with it at the game's current stage. Would be neat if there was some reason to get the skill high, like letting to get to otherwise inaccessible places or something...

Originally posted by Peath:

Unarmed is when your weapons break - beside that it's not useful.
Stealth is amazing for sneak attacks that can one-shot a troll in black forrest phase.
Archery seems overpowered until you meet monsters resistant to physical and piercing, Meanwhile shields are useful for reducing damage taken / block completly with heavy shields. Esspecially vs guys like Bonemass or Abomination.

For me the least useful are swords, and except iron mace for bonemass maces (Especially Club after H&H update).
Same for spears and heavy weapons, most of the time.

Most useful are knives, and bow followed by axes.

I've seen the usefulness of both shields and dodging in youtube videos, but my timing is terrible. Guess I should practice more during fights where it doesn't matter.

[❌ Peath]

Originally posted by MistrBill:

I've seen the usefulness of both shields and dodging in youtube videos, but my timing is terrible. Guess I should practice more during fights where it doesn't matter.

They can be useful in single player, playing online both parrying and dodging is tricky, or rather not optimal due to lag. Blocking can work with heavier shield, but I am just juking enemies by quick sprinting away while they're trying to hit me (a tree-troll still hits you tho).

[Cooperal]

Blocking skill will actually be a huge help when trying to cross the parry/block thresholds for progressively higher damaging enemies. And if you don't have the stats to execute a parry then you are missing out on a tool that is great for both dps and crowd control.

Probably swimming is the most useless skill. You usually want to avoid swimming even if just to not get wet. You are highly unlikely to be forced into a situation where having a high swim skill can actually save you. Some mobs don't follow into the water but you never have to swim far and you can preserve stamina while you wait by simply not moving. And although I've never needed to do it myself, I'm pretty sure you can circumvent the stamina problem by exiting the world and re-entering with full stamina.

Most of the rest I think depends on what you use and don't use in combat. Like I don't use many knives, spears or polearms. Often I am too impatient for melee sneak attacks and am happy getting my pierce damage using bows.

And of course unarmed is crap too. It has the same percentage damage scaling as all of the weapon skills, except it never scales off anything better than your bare fists. No gauntlet or knuckle-duster type weapons. The difference between a 0 skill and max skill punch is like 3 damage. Just like with swimming it is a skill that you should actively avoid needing to use. There are times where you want to hit something without wasting weapon durability I guess.

[MistrBill]

It'd be fun to have specific uses for the skills, that could give an advantage- and a name for the character, too, like Olaf the Brawler for unarmed combat or Rolf the sneak for stealth. An achievement system of sorts.

[TyresTyco]

To be honest I wouldnt feel the difference at all unless I play one high lvl skills character literally next to the fresh one.. probably.

If I make 11 dmg compared to the 10 at some point I dont really care. Same goes for stamina stuff. Increasing stats via far to small numbers isn't that interesting nor engaging at least for me. Never cared about these. Which is a shame. Skill systems should be interesting.

[TehJumpingJawa]

The only skill I find having a noticeable impact is jumping.

However with no reduction to fall damage, it usually just results in spine cracking landings.

I've died many more times to fall damage while building, than I have to combat with mobs.

[Tangoblue]

Originally posted by MistrBill:

80's to 90's? I try not to die too much, but having a skill in the 30's or 40's is pretty good, for me!

yup, I was in the high 50's when I went into the Plains. Ran into a few too many of these guys that lowered me into the 30's. i had to run around in the Swamp and Black forest for a while to raise my skills.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2677925658

[Landorf]

Unarmed is great... when you need to kick ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ greydwarf out of you house and dont want to crash your furniture. I mean the middle button attack...

Just do not bother about skill level - this is my advice. You dont want to die in this game, but you will. And trying to regain skills back on easy targets is a wasting of time. There's almost no difference between 50 and 55, so just stop to think of it (sorry for my eng).

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by TyresTyco:

To be honest I wouldnt feel the difference at all unless I play one high lvl skills character literally next to the fresh one.. probably.

If I make 11 dmg compared to the 10 at some point I dont really care. Same goes for stamina stuff. Increasing stats via far to small numbers isn't that interesting nor engaging at least for me. Never cared about these. Which is a shame. Skill systems should be interesting.

Originally posted by Landorf:

Just do not bother about skill level - this is my advice. You dont want to die in this game, but you will. And trying to regain skills back on easy targets is a wasting of time. There's almost no difference between 50 and 55, so just stop to think of it (sorry for my eng).

This has been my impression also. The effect of skills on game play feels pretty muted. And I've seen you tube videos demonstrating the difference between skill 0 and 100. It's noticeable, but mostly there's not a VAST difference, even between the lowest skill level and the highest.

That's fair enough for game balance. I don't want a Superman viking who leaps up, wrassles drakes out of the sky and beats them to death. Wait a minute, that would be pretty cool...

[TyresTyco]

Well.. it's just number juggling at this point. It's just so that valheims progression system is pretty tight numbered.

They could just increase the scale within.. everything.. and since we don't have all the content the chances for a number tweak surely is high. Unless.. they continue to just add +2 (armor and weapons) or +0,01 increase to whatever skill.

Small numbers aren't exciting. Thats the "rpg loot with +0,5% more whatever is useless and a waste of time " discussion all over again. Thats also why people consider bronze .. useless.

I dont really like that.

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by TyresTyco:

Well.. it's just number juggling at this point. It's just so that valheims progression system is pretty tight numbered.

They could just increase the scale within.. everything.. and since we don't have all the content the chances for a number tweak surely is high. Unless.. they continue to just add +2 (armor and weapons) or +0,01 increase to whatever skill.

Small numbers aren't exciting. Thats the "rpg loot with +0,5% more whatever is useless and a waste of time " discussion all over again. Thats also why people consider bronze .. useless.

I dont really like that.

With as much fun as it is already, it feels weird to think of this as an incomplete game. But yeah, I can imagine the skill system being one of the last things being tweaked. Same with the tech progression and so on.

[KING ALIEN]

I've died too many times for any of my skills to be above 20 for long. Kinda makes skill levels useless

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by KING ALIEN:

I've died too many times for any of my skills to be above 20 for long. Kinda makes skill levels useless

I was thinking the same, and for the same reason. Watch a video on youtube that compares the skills between 0 and 100. There's a difference, but it's nothing dramatic.